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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015629">like a wolf.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousanarchy/pseuds/perniciousanarchy'>perniciousanarchy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sleepaway (Roleplaying Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, Gen, introspective, mentions of bullying</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:29:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>590</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015629</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousanarchy/pseuds/perniciousanarchy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She had learned from a young age that people did not appreciate what they couldn’t predict.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Camp Howling Ground (Sleepaway 2020 campaign)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>like a wolf.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello have you seen my daughter???? Have you seen my daughter??? Have you seen her</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The other kids had always thought she was weird- Valentine knew that. She didn’t speak when it was expected of her, and she spoke too much when it wasn’t. She had learned from a young age that people did not appreciate what they couldn’t predict. It took her longer to learn how to stop caring, but the lesson stuck eventually.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite her trouble finding a place among her peers, she had come to enjoy the yearly summer camp her parents would ship her off to. The woods welcomed her with open arms every time, and it was akin to coming home. It seemed to understand her in a way that others could not, speaking in a language much older than she could comprehend- raw and instinctive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The forest didn’t lie; it didn’t speak in complicated half-truths in the same way that others of Valentine’s kind did. It never tried to sway her with pretty farces- it showed her both the early morning birdsong and the rotting, leftover rabbit carcasses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hid nothing, because it had nothing to hide. Valentine often found herself wishing that she could be the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hands traced familiar patterns in the tree faces as she made her way through her woods, walking the same path through the brush that she had travelled ever since she was 10 and wide-eyed and nervous of every snapping twig and rustling leaf. She wasn’t nervous any longer, simply because she had learned that anything worth being nervous about was not swayed by fear.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The first time it happened, she’d been 10. Valentine had stumbled into the woods by accident, tears clouding her eyes and blurring her vision as she haphazardly put one foot in front of the next, not caring where she ended up. She had just wanted to run, fast enough that the wind would catch her hair and then maybe the rest of her too, so it could carry her somewhere else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d thrown her shoes in the lake again. It was annoying, but not something that would normally get to her on its own. It was their words that had set her off- weapons that Valentine had never known how to defend against.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“How come you never get any letters from your mom and dad? I guess your parents don’t want you either!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She might have hit them. She might have hit </span>
  <em>
    <span>someone</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She couldn’t remember it clearly enough; all she could recall was the overwhelming need to </span>
  <em>
    <span>get out</span>
  </em>
  <span> by any means necessary, like a cornered animal. Like the wolves they learned about at camp, all sharp teeth and claws. Wolves didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time she slowed to a walk, she no longer knew where she was. Instead of feeling bothered or scared by the realization, Valentine could only feel relief. She had wished to be somewhere else, and it seemed she had achieved just that.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll just live out here, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she thought miserably, seating herself on a damp, moss-covered log, </span>
  <em>
    <span>No one will notice, anyways.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A breeze blew through the trees, gently rustling the canopy of leaves above her, and for a moment Valentine felt as if the woods had read her thoughts and were responding to them, welcoming her to stay as long as she liked. The old, timeworn trees bent and swayed with the force of the wind, reaching their branches out to her in an embrace.</span>
  <em>
    <span> I understand</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the forest said, communicating just fine without the need for spoken words. Valentine closed her eyes and listened.</span>
</p>
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